To Fuel Whiskey Wars
by DearSweetPapercut
Summary: "Grissom stood; all of hope that he had mustered finally evaporating from his body his eyes scanned the fifth bar of the night looking for his wife" a lot of angst but a happy GSR ending


(This is just a repost- something happened between me uploading the document and posting- but it originally came out messed up with chunks missing etc...)

I'm not sure what to say about this story- I was feeling rather melancholic and this pretty much wrote it-self.

It's another one of my non-GSR-GSR one-shots. (It has a happy ending...or at least happy as can be considering...)

Hope you all like - please review let me know.

_The Italics are bits and pieces of poetry I've written- if you're interested in reading more my profile name is also DearSweetPaper on Deviant Art where I post my original writing works. (I'd love feedback on those too...*bats eyelashes*) _

Disclaimer: I do not own anything associated with CSI (apart from a T-shirt...game...poster...) but I do own my own perverse mind and the poetry I guess.

**To Fuel Whiskey Wars**

_The whiskey seemed to burn the words on her tongue_

_Disintegrating them to the ashes of throaty hums that seemed to please the ears of the listener_

_She wondered why she had cared so much,_

_To try to please him with slurred smiles and stuttered eyes_

_He was a stranger after all_

_What did it matter?_

_His fingers fitted in the spaces between hers_

_As he tugged at her heart alongside her hand_

_This was a new sense of loneliness_

_This was a new feeling of broken_

_She knew that the moment she let him pull her to her feet _

_She let herself be alone with this stranger_

_To just not be alone_

* * *

The ceiling seemed to be watching Sara as she stared up at it through the darkness of the motel room she had found herself in that particular night.

It was just another night of discontent.

It was just another night of her new life.

A part of her wanted to shake all of the disappointment out of her system and return home to someone who truly loved her. But every time she tried Sara would find herself falling back into the same patterns of self destruction the taste of liquor far too sweet a lure.

The stranger beside her stirred and it was in that moment that she realised that she'd out stayed her welcome. Sara did not plan on being there when he woke up. This was just another sleazy one-night stand.

The person beside her was interchangeable.

It was just meaningless sex for her to lose herself in.

This was just more worthlessness to lose herself to.

It was as she was searched the poorly lit, littered floor for her panties she realised just how much she missed her husband. It was as she silently pulled her clothes on her eyes washing over the man lying snoring on the bed that she realised that she'd had enough.

* * *

Grissom stood all of hope that he had mustered finally evaporating from his body his eyes scanned the fifth bar of the night looking for his wife; she wasn't there. He hadn't seen her in days and it felt as if all of the hoping and wishing had been pointless.

He didn't care if she walked away from him again when he found her- he just wanted to know that she was safe- that after everything she was okay.

Because as much as he wished to be the man to make her happy all he wanted was for her to be out of harm's way even if it that place was in someone else's arms.

He just needed to find her.

Searching for her had become an obsession- he would randomly stop women with similar hair, or women that were near enough the same height desperate to know that she was at least still alive. He would imagine her collapsed in the corner of some bar- another drink in her hand as she sought to forget whatever was going wrong in her life.

With a sigh of resignation he gave up for the night knowing that there was another day. That there was more searching for him to do...

* * *

_The smell of cigarettes and whiskey linger in the air  
a scent that proclaims to be home_

_an odd sense of comfort_

_Familiarity of old_

_the same view outside the window_  
_the same city churning_

_what more is there to do?_

_Then light another cigarette_  
_and pour another drink_

* * *

She took a deep breath of night air lighting a cigarette as she headed towards the motel down the street that was currently called her home. Fremont Street- she could almost imagine the person she had been before laughing at the idea of ever living in such a place; but what could she do- she was here was she not.

As Sara took a long drag she thought of the reasoning behind her leaving.

If there was any reasoning at all?

All of the fights they'd been having seemed so insignificant since Sara had left home; all of the things that had kept them up every night didn't seem to matter as she realised that she was completely alone.

The walls of the motel room were covered in a peeling (what had once been) olive green paint with dingy brown furniture. As much as she wanted to complain about her current surroundings and place of residence she realised that it was all she could afford.

Between the drinking and the fighting with Grissom work somehow had slipped through the cracks- she'd been forced to take some personal time finding herself cut off from her income and grasping at whatever she could to continue funding her drinking.

As Sara looked around her current environs she realised that she couldn't complain because in the end the only person she had to blame for being here was herself...

* * *

Grissom stepped inside the house and there was nothing but silence beckoning him into his own home. It was then it struck him that this was far too big a place for him alone.

Everywhere he looked there were reminders of Sara- of their life together. And every so often he would hear the floor boards upstairs creek and the pace of his heart would quicken thinking that she had finally returned home- that she was back where she belonged.

But the fall of hope from that moment was far too great for him to be able to live with every day.

He guilty recalled the night Sara had left as he made his way towards their bedroom- correction his bedroom. She had been crying- a case had pushed her over the edge and as she shouted at him for this or that instead of tolerating it and understanding that she was stressed he snapped back.

Grissom remember how he had told her that he couldn't do this anymore- constantly being the person she took her frustrations out on.

He hadn't married her for that.

But as he lay alone in the four-poster bed they had chosen together as a fleeting fancy he realised that he never should have said those things. Grissom acknowledged that he married Sara because he loved her and all of those other things shouldn't have mattered because they could have worked through them.

* * *

_It's the corners of the room that  
Feel most like home_

_The darkness is comforting_  
_In its own way_

_With tired eyes_  
_And a lost sense of hope_

_Waiting_  
_Is all that can be done_

_Waiting for some small freedoms_

_Or something else_  
_Perhaps even something more_

* * *

Sara sat on the edge of the bed staring blankly at the wall ahead of her as astringent tears fell to the ground. She could hear the people in the next room arguing, and the sound child running around by the pool. She could hear everyone else's lives continuing while hers seemed to come to a complete halt in that very room.

The sound of banging on the door caused a jolt to run through her body. Standing on unsteady feet she opened it knowing who it was going to be. She felt disgusted with herself as she undressed lying down on the bed for him to take what it was he had come for.

When had she started being of those people who paid their rent this way?

At what stage had she been okay with letting a man use her as a sexual object to resolve the frustrations that he felt?

His hands groped at her desperately as he mindlessly thrusted into her ignoring her clear signs that she wanted to stop him. She attempted not to think about the moment he pulled out of her- she would vomit at the memory of his touch.

Sara bit her lip and let the tears continue to fall while she attempted to ignore the man on top of her...

* * *

Grissom sat at the kitchen table thoroughly reading the paper checking every single word hoping for news about Sara but nothing appeared. There were no mentions of her name, no descriptions of a Jane Doe that matched her.

A part of him didn't know whether to be pleased at the fact or to worry further about her current location.

Her phone had been disconnected and his attempts at reinstating the contract with the service provider had been useless. She had left her pager at the house all of his ways of contacting her had disappeared.

He had steadily been going through her contact book- desperately asking friends to tell him if they knew where she was but still nothing had turned up. No one knew.

Grissom took a sip of his coffee and wondered if Sara was completely lost to him...

* * *

_It feels just like falling_

_there is a sudden rush_

_Pins and needles_

_the loss of breath_

_it feels like hitting the ground_  
_and realising that_

_This is it_

_That you made it to the bottom_

_And that was as far  
As you were ever going to go_

* * *

Sara lay still listening to the sound of the door slamming. He'd discarded her once he had gotten what he'd wanted simply just saying 'see you next week' with a slimy grin that she couldn't deny. Her naked skin shivered at the breeze of the door opening feeling filthy at the remnants of his fluids on her.

Taking a deep breath Sara made a decision.

She showered- scrubbing at her body until the pale skin was red raw cleaning every single man she'd slept with the past few weeks off her body- every pointless fuck, every way of payment.

With tears of frustration in her eyes she packed all of her things into the suitcase she had taken from her house and after tossing the keys on the front desk Sara climbed into a cab.

This was it- she couldn't take it anymore.

After all of this time she realised she didn't want freedom. She didn't want the booze. She didn't want the seedy, anonymous sex.

She wanted him.

* * *

Grissom placed the phone back on the receiver; he'd just spoken to another friend that Sara had not turned to in her time of need. It was during this search for her he had truly realised how isolated she had been.

The only people she kept regular contact with had been the team but she hadn't even called them. Greg had spent his days off helping Grissom search for her but even his knowledge of her favourite haunts hadn't helped.

It sunk in then that she wasn't going to be at places they predicted because she didn't want to herself any more- she had made that much clear.

She had spent all of this time trying to escape attempting to become someone else.

Perhaps he should have been mourning rather than searching Grissom thought the exhaustion of the situation taking a hold of his whole body as the sound of the clocks ticking overwhelmed him.

* * *

_Sometimes you need to pick yourself apart  
In ways you never thought you could_

_Breaking yourself down_  
_Into the bare fibres_  
_Of who you are_

_Or rather_

_Who you pretend to be_

* * *

Grissom answered the door with an exhausted sigh- it was only half way through the day but he already wanted to return to bed and rest from all of the disappointment that he had encountered.

His heart stopped in his chest when he saw her.

Sara stood before him the suitcase she had taken the night she left by her eyes, her dark eyes filled with tears and her expression that of desperation.

"I'm so sorry..." She whimpered stepping towards him terrified of his response but Grissom didn't say a word he just pulled her into his arms letting the smell of her hair, and the feeling of her skin, settle around him like the feeling of finally being a place he recognised. Sara muttered to him as he held her wrapping her arms as tightly around him as she could.

"I want to come home..."

**The End **


End file.
